


honey

by blackeyedblonde



Series: -What We've Got- Verse [7]
Category: True Detective
Genre: Anal Sex, Bottom Rust, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gentle Sex, Husbands, Love, M/M, Old Married Couple, Pet Names, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Series, Rain, Romance, WWG Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 21:17:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15518769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde
Summary: Tonight’s darkness is a different kind, and the love Rust has for Marty is a different kind of affection from the love he found in the revelation of death. That love was like slipping into a warm saltwater pool—buoyant, pure, and infinite. This love with Marty has a heartbeat. Not so much in the sense that it will stop one day, but in that it’s a big part of what keeps him alive.





	honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hieroglyphics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hieroglyphics/gifts).



> It recently occurred to me that I haven't written any domestic redneck smut for these two in about a hundred thousand years (basically a year and a half or thereabouts), so I had to do something to remedy that. Lightly inspired by a post we had going on tumblr the other day, where I suggested Marty calling Rust "honey" during some of their old married couple bumpin' and grindin'. Qiosang wanted rain and angst added into that mix, so there's rain and a pinch of angst. Does it fit? I don't know. This isn't beta-read, but here it is nonetheless.

 

 

Her birthday had always been worse to weather than the day she died. 

In Rust’s mind, this had been an instinctively known truth for the past thirty years. Muscle memory. After all, when it was all said and done, the day she died had broken him in more ways than one, recollection included. Nothing remained of that day but a bone-deep agony sifted through the shroud of grief, the kind of pain that made better men go crazy. But he didn’t have much trouble remembering the two years Sophia was alive, and the two days they celebrated her growing before she was gone.  

And so January had always been the hardest, but Rust still dreads that day in mid-May before it eventually comes and goes. In the past, neck-deep in scripture he didn’t believe in, he’d been tempted to buy a quart of lamb’s blood from the Greek butcher and paint it above his door, almost begging the memory to pass him by like a wretched and righteous spirit. He never did, of course. Still doesn’t these days, because Marty probably wouldn’t take too kindly to having blood on the porch steps, at least where the prying eyes of their neighbors were concerned.

Although, Marty’s presence in his life is a far cry better than lamb’s blood when it comes to warding off old demons. The sun that splits through deep cracks and lights up some of his darkest days. That much has been proven time and again through their shared life together.

In May Marty tends to a shine a little brighter, if only to bring some illumination into the shadows clouding Rust’s peripheral vision. He does this without being asked, possibly without even truly knowing. Rust is thankful for that—grateful. If he were one of those better men he thinks he might thank God, but for the time being he only thanks Marty.  
  


*  
  


There is a recurring nightmare that plagues him every few years, less and less with three decades gone, but still always enough to rattle him. It was what almost drove him into buying the lamb’s blood, the time the dream gored him three times in one week, holed up somewhere in a bumfuck motel in south Texas with nothing but two grams of coke and a leather jacket. In the end it’d been easier to reach for a bottle instead.

With the curse of hindsight yoked around his neck, the dream always starts with Rust knowing that something terrible is about to happen. Sophia is playing outside, going up and down the driveway on her little tricycle, and his whole body overflows with liquid dread. He’s in the kitchen, the bathroom, the back bedroom when it happens—too far, too late, always running out in the spring sunshine with leaden limbs just in time to watch the car swerve off the road and hit his baby.

It replays like that, on a loop, until he wakes up soaked in sweat with her name ready to rip a scream from the back of his throat. A sentence served in hell would be easier, Rust reckons, if he hadn’t already been through the earthly plane’s equivalent in waking life. The nightmare is only a reminder of when he was not there to protect his only child.

He and Marty don’t talk about it much when it happens. For the most part, Rust prefers it that way. The sooner to wake, the sooner to try and forget again—at least for a little while.  
  


*  
  


It rains for a week solid at the start of May. April showers were bringing May floods in Louisiana, the weather man had said. The so-called flowers were busy drowning in their beds overnight beneath ten inches of rainwater. Marty buys sandbags at the hardware store and he and Rust work in the boggy heat of late afternoon, hauling them from the bed of the truck and stacking them up around the screened porch to keep the wet out. Ghost watches from her seat in a nearby patio chair, overseeing the work with the occasional twitch of her tail, white paws folded delicately in front of her.

The sky opens again that evening and pours for what feels like hours. It drums on the house and pings off the tin roof above the patio, overflowing the gutters and turning the yard into a small marsh. Marty checks to see that his sandbags have held strong, and feeling confident they’ll last through the morning, he finally makes way for bed.

Rust is already there, curled on his side with the sheet pulled up to his waist, breathing steadily. Marty sees that damned purple bird with its ink wings spread open on Rust’s ribs and his breath snags a little. Shit never gets old, though he’s seen and touched and tasted it a thousand times or more. He’d be tempted to do as much right this very minute if the wave of something dim and blue weren’t radiating off Rust like a low-burning furnace.

For now, he only slides into his side of the bed and turns the lamp off, bathing the room over in dark. The blackness seems to amplify the rain somehow, and when it thunders in the distance the windows rattle in their frames. Marty waits a few beats and then bridges the small gap between him and Rust, only placing the flat palm of his hand in the center of the other man’s back for now. Light but grounding; reminding Rust that he’s here, even though they both know that already.

There have always been times when Rust clicks off, withdrawn into a strange place only he can see and feel, and Marty’s come to accept it within this new chapter of their partnership. He doesn’t fight it anymore or shoulder senseless guilt for things he’s not responsible for. He lets it be, lets it breathe, lets it come in and out like the moving tide. Holds his arms open once it’s gone and Rust comes back to him every time, a wayward sailor delivered from his own storm.

“You need anything?” Marty asks anyhow, spreading his fingers so his thumb touches the fine edge of Rust’s shoulder blade. It’s raining so hard he wonders if the sound of his voice carried over the storm at all.

Rust heard him just fine. He takes a few moments to think about what he needs, in the grand cosmic scheme of things. There’s one thing he wants that he’ll never get back, at least in this life, but time spent at the edge of the veil has taught him he’ll be reunited with it eventually. He came close, once. There in the peaceful dark.

Tonight’s darkness is a different kind, and the love Rust has for Marty is a different kind of affection from the love he found in the revelation of death. That love was like slipping into a warm saltwater pool—buoyant, pure, and infinite. This love with Marty has a heartbeat. Not so much in the sense that it will stop one day, but in that it’s a big part of what keeps him alive.

Rust turns over to face his husband, only barely making out his outline in the black room. They watch each other without needing to see. When Marty reaches out and drapes his arm around Rust’s shoulders to pull him close, he goes without a fuss, grateful and willing.

“Relax, darlin’,” Marty mumbles, gruff but warm. His palm slides down to Rust’s hip as he kisses the place next to his nose. “I’ll give you a handy if it’ll help you sleep.”

It’s said with a pinch of humor, nothing unkind. Rust contemplates the offer and then decides he’d rather up the stakes if Marty’s keen on putting a hand in, figuratively and literally. The night is still young and he wants to think about other things than the blurred haunt of old melancholy, get lost in a sea of sensation while the rain roars overhead.

“I’d rather you fuck me,” Rust says plainly, not in any mood to mince words, and Marty’s grip slides down to his ass and tightens without hesitation. “If you’re feeling up to it.”  

“So long as there’s breath left in my damn body,” Marty says, pushing one of his knees between Rust’s thighs. “You’re gonna have to start giving me more warning than that, though. Sometimes the engine don’t run like it used to.”

“Is it running tonight?” Rust asks, snaking hand down between their bellies until he finds what he was looking for. “Mmhmm, seems so.”

“Aren’t you lucky,” Marty says through a laugh, and brings his hand up to cradle the back of Rust’s head as he nuzzles in for another peck.

It’s soft, maybe softer than Rust might’ve wanted at first, but then Marty’s lips are skimming the line of his throat while his hand slides south to palm Rust’s cock through the thin cotton of his briefs. Rust’s body burns and melts into Marty’s arms and kisses without a fight, giving himself over to it in full surrender. He doesn’t care what Marty does now, so long as it grants him a moment to be held instead of holding on.

There’s the bedside drawer opening and closing, then Marty’s mouth in the nook between Rust’s neck and shoulder while his hand pulls the elastic waistband down around Rust’s thighs and then starts working him open with slick fingers. Marty doesn’t rush this, and Rust revels in it while it lasts. The initial pain that wanes into peculiar discomfort, and eventually a deep twinge of heat in his lower belly once Marty’s fingers crook just right. He’s blissfully aware and present of his body, breathing through the ritual, focusing on every new feeling as it arrives and departs or transforms altogether.

“Show me what you want,” Marty says when his hand falls away, just a husky voice and source of warmth in the shadows. Rust can feel him shifting around on the bed, shedding clothes piece by piece.

There is a time and place for seeing each other but here in the dark with the rain falling above, Rust only wants Marty’s weight and heat at his back, covering him, pushing him down and keeping him held steady. He rolls over onto his stomach and tucks a pillow underneath his hips, shivering as he tries not to rut against the soft cotton for friction. Feeling far too weightless and bare until Marty finds a condom and finally settles back in the spread between Rust’s thighs, the bedframe creaking beneath them.

Maybe this is how old men fuck each other. Too tired and worn out to really put the effort in anymore, but they’re long since past any clever tricks or showboating. They’ve learned what they like, and this is what Rust wants—so Marty will give it to him. And he does, so sweetly, when he lowers himself over his husband and slides into the welcome heat of him until they’re pressed flush and hinged together.

“Jesus,” Marty says simply, like he’d somehow forgotten the bliss to be found in their bodies merging for communion. He takes a steadying breath and touches Rust’s side, bowing over to press a kiss against the back of his neck while they ease into the newfound stretch and burn.

Despite the initial discomfort that Rust knows will fade away, he pants out a sigh in something akin to relief at being filled up. His breath makes the pillow under his cheek damp and he tries to pull more air into his lungs, letting the lines of his body relax with each exhalation. A new wave of rain washes over the house in sheets and Marty takes that as his cue to move, giving a shallow roll of his hips that makes Rust groan in more pleasure than pain.

“Alright?” Marty asks, word high in his throat.

“Better than,” Rust answers. “Keep on, and don’t you stop.”

Lightning flashes outside, so close it illuminates the bedroom for a split second. Rust catches the flicker of their shadow splayed on the wall and feels overcome with an emotion he can’t place. Love, melancholy, some ounce of wonder—to think they’d come this far. To think he’d been able to share his broken body with anybody at all.

“C’mon, sweetheart,” Marty pants, urging Rust up on his knees with a forearm wrapped around his middle. Rust comes up with some trembling effort but then presses his ass back onto Marty’s cock, braced on his forearms with his head hung low while he takes it long and steady from behind.

One of Marty’s hands strokes the quivering skin on Rust’s stomach while they’re pressed chest to back. His fingers trace that ugly old scar and Rust figures Marty doesn’t even know he’s doing it, mindlessly following the contour of tissue like a fracture in clay pottery, and Rust’s so keyed up god damn if it doesn’t make his dick ache even more.

But then Marty’s got both hands braced in their bedding for leverage, mouth at Rust’s shoulder while he grinds in deep enough to brush the spot that makes Rust’s eyes stream. He makes a little noise in the back of his throat and Marty does it again and again, as slow and agonizing as the first time.

“Marty—oh fuck,” Rust hisses, all but praying for release now even though part of him wants it go on like this forever. He’s sweating and shaking, nearly feverish with bursts of pleasure. “Christ, _Christ._ ”

He doesn’t even realize the sob burning in his chest until it’s broken out into the air and Marty’s stopped what he’s doing. His fingers brush Rust’s neck and then, touching the wetness on his face, he pulls out and away. Rust nearly bites his tongue from the anguish of feeling so suddenly empty.

But it’s May, and Marty knows. He doesn’t know but he _knows_. He knows, he knows, he always fucking knows.

“Turn over for me,” he says, guiding Rust’s body around with his broad and gentle hands. Their heated skin burns where it touches, but Rust does what Marty asks, if only it’ll bring him back closer again.

Flat on his back now, Rust lets Marty push his legs up until they’re hitched against his shoulders. He feels bent in half but it doesn’t matter, because Marty is leaning down to kiss him and slide back into his body all at once. Rust shamelessly moans into his mouth, eyes clenched tight as the first thrust at this new angle almost shoves him back into the headboard.

“I love you,” Marty’s voice whispers through the dark. A reminder, a prayer. His hand comes up to tangle in the short waves at the top of Rust’s head, and then his voice is in Rust’s ear while he grinds into him again. “Let it go, honey.”

Wild honey might be the very thing that bursts on Rust’s tongue in a phantom bouquet when he feels Marty reach between them and start stroking his cock. His body bucks and trembles when that hidden spot inside him flares up again, and then he’s coming with a gasp while Marty guides him through it to the end.

Not long after that Marty’s own release all but breaks him down and he slumps against Rust in a heap, the both of them boneless but still breathing. Old men worn ragged but sated all the same. Rust’s legs drop into the bed but he holds Marty close to him, reluctant to let him leave anytime soon despite the mess they’ve made of themselves.

The rain has begun to slow outside, calmed down now into a steady trickle. Marty’s nose presses against Rust’s cheekbone as he feathers another few kisses to his face, sweet and modest in the lull of afterglow.

“How’re you feeling?” Marty asks, as if he didn’t just fuck Rust to within an inch or two of dazed stupor. But Rust knows it’s not any praise he’s fishing around for.

“Not half bad,” Rust says, and then finds Marty’s mouth to kiss his partner and husband in earnest, murmuring his gratitude there _._ "Thank you." _  
  
Lucky_ , he doesn’t say. And _loved_ , which he feels deep and abundantly in his beating heart.

   


**Author's Note:**

> Surprise, they're married! More on that later :)


End file.
